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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 2009051" data-attributes="member: 2013">As promised, here is a quick review of the Stronghold Builders' Guidebook which I purchased yesterday from my local WotC store...Price: $21.95 for a 128-page softcover - I am not thrilled with the constant upward creep in the price of RPG products, but this is consistent with things like Bluffside: City on the Edge (144 pages at $22.95) so I guess I shouldn't do too much complaining.Percent of OGC: 0%. This is admittedly a sticking point with me on WotC stuff - I understand that they don't have to follow the OGL/d20STL when releasing their material, but it sure would make it easier to have consistencey across the d20 landscape if they would release a few of the mechanical terms (such as planar stat blocks, divine abilities, and stronghold statistics) as OGC rather than forcing every publisher to generate their own system from scratch. If you want everyone else to play by the rules, you should be playing by the rules yourself (they HAVE given us the SRD, including psionics, but I would like to see them add the "mechanics" from at least the major expansions - Deities and Demigods, Manual of the Planes, and Stronghold Builder's Guidebook - to the SRD).First Impressions: There are a lot of good ideas in here; rather than giving strict rules for what a room's dimensions are, we are told that a "standard" unit is about 4,000 cubic feet (20x20x10). We are also told not to sweat the specifics... if a PC wants to build a room with an arched (15') ceiling, let him. It's a very good approach to make things even more modular than usual. The sidebars are well-used (one set takes you through the creation of an example stronghold step by step, for instance). There are also a lot of ideas for incorporating magic into a stronghold - this incorporation comes in three "flavors" - Wondrous Architecture (think "Really Big Wondrous Items", Wall Augmentations (if you think a stone castle wall is bad to have to breach, imagine a stone wall that throws spell effects at you), and a section on using "normal" magic items (from the DMG) in your stronghold.Initial Annoyances: The Number One annoyance for me is Wizards' continual push for Political Correctness getting in the way of good editing. The character who is building the sample stronghold is sometimes referred to as "he" and sometimes as "she" - with the change sometimes coming mid-paragraph. While I don't mind seeing "she" in things and having female iconic characters, having an iconic character's sex changing from sentence to sentence gets very annoying. IOW, the desire to be "inclusive" with both "he" and "she" sometimes leads to horrific editing jobs, and this book is no exception.Breakdown by Chapter:CHAPTER ONE: BUILDING A STRONGHOLD - This chapter walks you through the "bare bones" of the stronghold-building process. It contains rules on how to modify the cost of a stronghold based on proximity to towns/cities/other suppply centers and contains a sidebar walking you through the construction of a sample stronghold. What it does NOT contain are lists of components and costs... these are handled in later chapters. Chapter One is basically "here's how you use the rest of the book to create your stronghold." The sample stronghold was relevant and clear (except for the afore-mentioned androgynous character). A quick sidebar also notes that realism is not a good aim - because in real life, castles took about a century to build - use of magic in D&D speeds the process greatly, "because characters want to get a chance to actually enjoy their castle." Seems fair to me... I don't want my PC plunking down enormous sums of cash for a structure he will never use.CHAPTER TWO: STRONGHOLD COMPONENTSThis is the meat of the book, taking up about half of the book. Here you will find lists of materials with Hardness, Hit Points, and Break DCs (Break DC is based on thickness). Here you find the various types of rooms you can install in your stronghold - from an Alchemist's Laboratory to a Bedroom to a Theatre to a Torture Chamber. (Also included is a sidebar encouraging the downplay of torture - basically "just roll the Intimidate Check and get on with it." This section also contains clusters - "groups" of rooms that frequently come together (e.g., a Tower and Guard Barracks) to save you the trouble of purchasing them separately (though you can if you want). This chapter also discusses hiring Staff members (like the cook, the resident Alchemicaly assistant, blacksmith, and so forth), Walls (and the possible magical enhancements), use of magic items, and Wondrous Architecture. In other words, this is the chapter where all the "building" happens and where you will find costs for everything you could possibly want for your stronghold. Of course, this was my favorite section, as it presents a lot of ideas for use of magic items - suggestions such as "since you can move up and down as well as side to side when ethereal, you might consider building a room 50 feet down in the ground with no windows and no doors if you have a means of going ethereal." The selection of enhancements for walls is not all-encompassing, but a great variety is given. The same goes for Wondrous Architecture; creative players will always be able to think up more things, but there is a great deal here to start from. In my mind, this is the best section in the book.CHAPTER THREE: STRONGHOLDS IN YOUR CAMPAIGNThis section is more for the Dungeon Master than the PCs... it discusses placement of strongholds, how to attack them (and how to defend them), and gives lots of suggestions (though few hard and fast rules) for making strongholds feel "realistic." The comment that "a well-designed fortress can be just as memorable as the enemies within" is a very good reminder to DMs... players remember the Keep of Bone as much as they remember the Necromancer King. Most veteran DMs will find this section a little tired and simplistic (gee, you mean that a Teleport spell and Decanters of Endless Water make seiges almost impossible? Really?), but it is utilitarian and useful for newer DMs, so I don't begrudge its inclusion. I myself don't have a ton of need for it because I learned a lot about stronghold seiges many years ago in TSR products such as the Boxed Sets, but if I hadn't received that instruction then, I would be grateful to have it now.CHAPTER FOUR: SAMPLE STRONGHOLDSJust what it says - this runs the gauntlet from mundane ("the Cheap Keep," a very basic structure given over to the most spartan of needs ) to the fantastic ("The Citadel of the Planes", a luxurious structure that uses portals to span multiple planes of existence). These are good templates and starting points, and serve an oft-neglected purpose - showing us "how to do it" several different ways... think about it, wouldn't it have been nice for the Players' Handbook to show us six different fighters at 10th level with different sets of Feats and Skills (the archer, the tank, the swashbuckler, the master-of-all-weapons, the knight-on-horseback, and the samurai, for example)?CONCLUSION:This is a book made up of a great mix of "crunchy bits" and "idea seeds." You aren't just given ideas without the rules to implement them as sometimes happens in other supplements. On the other hand, you aren't just handed rules without suggestions on how to use them. There are numerous examples and explanations (very important) and the suggestions should help anyone from the greenest newbie to the most experience veteran (and let's face it, anytime we get new rules, we are all newbies as far as the ruleset goes... we may know a lot of theory about role-playing and campaign management, but it always takes time to learn the mechanical ins and outs of a new ruleset and that's what this is - a new set of rules for building strongholds). Of course I would have liked them to stuff more in here, but that would have upped the page count and I have to keep in mind the fact that you can fit only so much material into a given amount of space. Given the page count, I really didn't see a lot of room for improvement. The editing problems mentioned above and the pricetag dampened my enthusiasm a bit, so I can't give it a perfect score, but I think 4.6 out of 5 is about right.  It gets a 4 on ENWorld's reviews due to the lack of OGC and pricetag.  If only the "stat block ideas" had been made OGC (allowing later publishers to use them), it would have gotten a 5.  As it is, this makes this book incompatible with other professional publications not done by WotC, and therefore places limits on its utility.  When I buy a sourcebook at this price, I would prefer to see it compatible with lots of future products.--The Sigil5/9/2002</blockquote>

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